Crumbling Rock 2006 Retail Price: $40
Blend: 38% Cabernet Franc, 33% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot
Production: 525 cases
Description: The deep ruby color of the 2006 Crumbling Rock is accompanied by a sweet, complex nose of intense black fruits, crushed rocks, graphite, dried mushrooms and a hint of vanilla. Full-bodied and viscous on the palate, the wine shows plush tannins balanced with an acidic backbone and a rich mouthfeel. This well structured wine is built to improve for many years in the bottle.
Vintage: 2006 was a season of ups and downs in terms of weather. A warm and dry April preceded a normal month of May. June was bright and sunny through flowering, but the skies opened up for a record 6 inches of rain June 22nd and 23rd, thankfully after the flowering was finished. A typical July was followed by essentially no rain in a hot August, which had the potential to stress the vines; but September and October were cool, with about twice the normal rainfall, and the vines got the water they needed. The hot August weather and intermittent periods of sun in the fall were enough to ripen the fruit fully and produce complex, well-balanced wines.
Vineyard: West, South and East facing, planted at 1895 vines per acre and limited to 10-12 clusters per vine, yielding 1.5 – 2.8 tons per acre, or about one bottle per vine.
Fruit handling: Picking dates ranged from October 3 (Merlot) to October 26th (Cabernet Sauvignon). Each lot was hand picked by our field crew, cooled overnight, hand sorted by cluster, destemmed, and sorted again by hand to remove remaining stems and imperfect berries. The whole berries were lightly crushed and gravity-loaded (our grapes never go through a pump) into our temperature controlled stainless steel tanks, then left to cold soak for 3-5 days as separate varieties.
Vinification: After cold soaking, each lot was warmed and fermented for one to two weeks, with temperatures peaking in the high 80’s and regular pumping over to give oxygen to the fermenting wine. The wines were racked into French oak barrels (75% new) in the middle of November where they underwent malolactic fermentation. The wines spent 16 months in barrel, where they were topped and stirred weekly for 6 months, then topped bi-weekly until they were blended, fined, and lightly-filtered in preparation for bottling. The 2006 Crumbling Rock was bottled on April 2nd, 2008.
